Saturday, April 15, 2006

In an chapter of my sci-fi novel: SummaUfo (http://summaufo.blogspot.com.Dec/10/05), I wrote and drew a futuristic medical processing. In it, a woman affected of leukemia (cancer of white blood cells, confined initially to the bone marrow -internal cavity of the bones-), is treated causing resting of her bone marrow. To such effect, the leukemia patients’cells are transferred by means of small tubes to the exterior (out of the body), toward other bone marrows (of pig or, other), in order to exhaust the cell reproductive potential and permit the rest of the bone marrow of the sick patient. Something of this, has occurred in the fast recovery of Hannah Clark, an English girl of 12 years in which her old heart affected of cardiomiopathy -done not remove after a transplant - and placed in rest for 10 years, worked again in adequate form with barely 5 days of physiological adecuation. Hannah, affected of an illness that excessively stretches her cardiac fibers, had at the age of 2 years, of a heart of the size of the double one of the normal thing. In these conditions, with a heart incapáble to pump adequate blood, she was submitted to cardiac surgery, in the Great Ormond Street Hospital of London. She was transplanted a heart of pig, the same one that was attached to the original organ, at the age of 2.

The thing functioned well for 10 years and to avoid the refusal they administered her by life immunosuppressant medication, what generated in her, a lymphatic cancer, happily surpassed. In the graphics – BBC Courtesy- the heart of a pig transplanted at the age of 2, appears to the right. The 2 aortas were fused and the blood that came from the lung was grasped by the 2 left auricles.. As it is supposed, disconnect the sutures of both hearts, at the age of 12 was a relatively easy task. Although the doctors calculated a prolonged recovery, Hannah surprised them, returning to her daily physical routine in barely 5 days. With Hannah some possibilities have been opened 1) a new consistent, medical technique that put to rest the affected organ with the aid of mechanical devices (that temporarily established, carry out all the work), activating again the organ, in days, weeks or, years after an adequate rest - perhaps curative- of the organ 2)

"that cryopreservatión is not the only method to conserve organs, bylong periods. Suffices with a little blood, a aseptic enviromment and certain degree of permanent corporal temperature".

Corroborates the previous assertion, the case of the craniopagus parasiticus, in which the second head survives with a meager blood flow, being able the face to smile and toblink. By the way ¿ what happened if dispensing with the body to this extra head, it could be isolated and to supply of greater blood flow?